PTCL sold
The Etisalat/Dubai Islamic Bank consortium won the auction held by the Privatisation Commission of the Govt. of Pakistan. The winning consortium bid at US$2.5 billion was US$1 billion more than the next highest offer. China Mobile bid US$1.409 billion and SingTel US$1.167 billion.

What does this mean for telecoms in Pakistan?
For the industry this is good news and this is bad news. Etisalat will be a formidable competitor but will also be a much better supplier than the old PTCL. Smaller companies will be much better off as they will see better levels of service - fewer opportunities for staff to extort money. Larger competitors like WorldCall and Telecard will face much stiffer competition as they go after the same clients as the new PTCL.

For consumers we should see much better service levels, though whether prices will go up or down remains to be seen. Having had to get a phone line application signed by the (Federal) Telecoms Minister on one occasion and been asked to pay Rs100,000 to get a phone line shifted I can only expect things to get better.

How much better is the question we are all asking. The staff is the same. Can they be re-educated? Is customer service something that they can be expected to understand or even give? It seems unlikely.
Certainly PTCL is excessively overstaffed and could lose half its employees.

We wait and hope.

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- posted @ Tuesday, June 21, 2005